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 News from Around the Americas | August 2007 
Colombia: FARC Hostages Died in Military-Rebel Shootout
 Constanza Vieira - IPS
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| | Colombian police unpack money seized from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in La Hormiga August 19, 2007. (Reuters/Policia Nacional |
Bogota - The deaths of 11 of the 12 regional lawmakers being held hostage by Colombia’s FARC rebels may have occurred in the midst of fighting between the insurgents guarding the hostages and the "Junglas", an elite military unit, according to a reconstruction of events based on interviews by IPS.
In the wee hours one night in June a motorboat carrying some 30 guerrilla fighters and 11 of the legislators, who have been held hostage for more than five years, ran into a Jungla commando in the headwaters of the Cajambre river in western Colombia.
The boat was escorted, on land, by another rebel unit commanded by Milton Sierra, who Colombian authorities have given the alias "J. J.".
The group of hostages had reportedly been handed over to J.J. the day before by another FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) unit because some of the insurgents guarding them had suspiciously deserted, and the decision was taken to immediately move the lawmakers.
The 12th legislator, Deputy Sigifredo López, survived because "he was not at that moment with the rest of the hostages," according to the FARC.
Perhaps the Jungla commando launched a failed attempt to rescue the hostages, or else the guerrillas spotted the military unit and opened fire. In any case, "everyone started shooting," a source close to the FARC told IPS on condition of anonymity.
The source said the FARC’s Secretariado del Estado Mayor, the insurgent group’s leadership, gave its members and supporters instructions not to comment on the events, but to wait instead for an official statement from that body.
The motorboat pulled up to the bank to join the FARC land unit, and "two or three" military helicopters immediately brought in troops who joined the fighting.
"The shooting went on for three days, and the bodies were left on the boat," said the source.
After three days, the Jungla commando and the guerrillas both took shelter on the steep hills of the Andean valley that the river runs through.
"The bodies were left there for another three days" before the guerrillas "returned to see what was left." They were incommunicado, having lost their radio telephones, the source added.
"The army was still there. They thought there were more guerrillas" than were actually in the area, and they ambushed the insurgents. "The guerrillas responded. But the military had strong backup," he said. Then for the second time, "the army and guerrillas each went their own way."
The insurgents finally returned again and were able to recover the bodies of the hostages and their own dead.
It was at that point that J.J. was killed, according to the source, whose account helps make sense of fragments of information from various sources gathered by IPS in the course of investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the11 lawmakers from the western department (province) of Valle del Cauca, where the fighting took place.
The legislators formed part of a much larger group of hostages held by the FARC with the aim of exchanging them for imprisoned guerrillas in an eventual humanitarian swap. The group includes former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and other civilians, as well as members of the armed forces and police, and three U.S. military contractors.
The various sources concur on the place where the fighting broke out, but differ with respect to the number of guerrilla casualties and on the alleged participation of foreign troops, as claimed by one of the sources.
IPS will refrain from reporting the sources’ description of the origin of the shots that killed the hostages, which is to be determined by a humanitarian mission of forensic experts.
A report on the Colombian navy’s web site dated Jun. 15 states that "in a joint operation between the army, the navy and the air force, the guerrilla leader….alias ‘J.J.’ was killed in combat while riding in a vessel on the Cajambre river, upriver from the town of Barco, in the department of Valle del Cauca."
JUNGLA COMMANDOS
The Junglas are trained in reconnaissance, infiltration and the taking of objectives.
To carry out infiltration operations, a few members of the Junglas pose as ordinary campesinos (small farmers) or indigenous people. They also infiltrate the FARC itself, as occurred in this case according to the anonymous source.
The commandos are equipped with night vision goggles and other hi-tech devices and are trained in survival techniques. They are capable of living for weeks in the jungle, often travelling quietly by kayak along rivers. Once they have located a target, they are backed up in the assault by troops brought in by helicopter.
The elite unit was set up in 1989, and at least at the start, in the early 1990s, was trained by the Special Air Service (SAS) regiment, the British Army's special forces unit, which also trained native instructors.
Earlier this year, the British BBC Mundo’s Spanish language correspondent in Colombia, Hernando Salazar, reported that Afghan police were being trained here by the Junglas in anti-narcotics techniques.
In addition to allowing infiltration of the guerrilla group, the anonymous source acknowledged another "mistake": the FARC, which has been in arms since 1964, "has not adapted to dealing with the Jungle Commandos."
This explains the wording of the communiqués from the FARC’s Western Joint Command (CCO), which announced the legislators’ deaths on Jun. 28, and on Jul. 10 said that "We failed in our mission to guard the prisoners and deliver them to the exchange…"
WHEN DID IT HAPPEN?
In its Jun. 28 message, the CCO said that on the 18th of June, "a still unidentified military group attacked the camp where (the hostages) were held."
IPS received another report through a Germany-based network that monitors events in Colombia, signed by the Community Council of Río Cajambre (the authority for the black community in that area), and dated simply "July 2007." The people living in the area along the Cajambre river are black.
The Community Council reported the displacement of 50 families living in the headwaters of the river "because of the risk of dying in the crossfire in clashes in the collective territory of Río Cajambre."
"In the month of June, aerial bombardment, overflying and machinegun strafing have intensified, especially in the Agua Sucia valley high up the (Cajambre) river, which is also an area where men and women from the river go to practice their traditional productive activities," the Community Council wrote.
"These events have caused the internal displacement of 50 families from the Barco community to the communities of San Isidro and Aragón," the Council said. The displaced families keep on the move while the battles are ongoing, and "when the situation calms down, they return to their community."
"The most critical events happened between the 10th and 18th of June, 2007, when the fighting intensified," the Council said.
The Community Council asked "the armed combatants, both legal and illegal, to respect the rights of the civilian population and to practice the principle of distinguishing" between combatants and non-combatants, as established by international humanitarian law.
According to Colombia’s intelligence chief, Andres Peñate, the hostages' deaths were the result of an accidental clash between rebel units.
President Álvaro Uribe himself denied any military attempt to rescue the hostages by force. He also denied that there had been any fighting in the departments of Valle del Cauca and Cauca, further south, on Jun. 17, 18 or 19.
The death of J.J. was reported by Vice Admiral Edgar Celi Núñez, head of naval operations, on Jun. 15. The guerrilla leader’s body was not shown to the press.
The entry for the week of Jun. 16-22 in the military actions logbook of the Observatory of the Presidential Programme for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Rights, maintained by the vice president’s office, has been altered, eliminating the report of the combat originally entered as having taken place on Jun. 15 in Barco.
The original version on the web site, which was downloaded by IPS on Jul. 16, said: "In Barco, in the district of Cajambre and the jurisdiction of Buenaventura (Valle), fighting broke out between the navy and subversives of the Manuel Cepeda Vargas Front of the FARC, in which Milton Sierra Gómez, alias ‘J.J.’, the leader of this Front, was killed. In the same action, two of the guerrilla camps were dismantled. Source: El País," the main regional newspaper.
The following note appears next, in blue typeface: "However, according to information from the navy, this event happened in the same way and place described, on Wednesday Jun. 6, 2007."
Although there is no reference to fighting in Barco or Río Cajambre in the logbook entry for the week of Jun. 6-12, this can be explained by the fact that the logbook is based on "a daily review of national and regional newspapers and radio stations consulted on the Internet," according to its methodology section.
Uribe said that "during the third week of June" a meeting was held between "delegates of the three European countries, France, Spain and Switzerland, who are authorised by the national government to seek a humanitarian agreement," and the FARC spokesman, Raúl Reyes, who works in the department of Putumayo, in the south of the country, bordering Ecuador.
So far, the government and the FARC have differences, which IPS learned are being overcome, about the make-up of the neutral forensic commission that will examine the bodies of the legislators and determine whether they were executed by their captors, or died in the crossfire, as the guerrillas claim.
The Cajambre river rises 4,500 metres above sea level. It is located around 50 km southwest of the strategic port of Buenaventura, in Valle del Cauca, Colombia’s only Pacific ocean port, which is intensely disputed in the armed conflict. |
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